After
by trufflemores
Summary: 3.23-4.01. Iris aches for an after. (Barry disappears in the Speed Force, and Iris writes a letter to him.)


_Dear Barry,_

 _I had a plan._

 _I wasn't ready – how could anyone be ready to die? – but I thought I knew how it all would end._ _I promised myself I wouldn't try to hold onto you, because I knew you would drown with me before you let go._ _I wanted to be brave enough to close my eyes, but instead I looked at you and wanted to live._

 _I wanted to live to see your smile on your twenty-ninth birthday._ _I wanted to live to hold your hand as summer turned to fall._ _I wanted to bury myself in your hugs._ _I wanted to walk alongside you on the pier and sit across from you at Jitters and inhabit your spaces at STAR and CCPD and anywhere your footsteps fell._ _I wanted to introduce you to my friends as my husband._ _I wanted so much more than twenty-eight years, Bartholomew._

 _I dream about that night, walking through the alternatives: if I had held onto you, if I had taken your place, if the Speed Force had simply left us alone._ _I thought I would spare you from drowning by letting you go._ _But the ocean was calling, and you had to go._

 _Part of me has to believe that you'll come home._ _You'll be back before your scent fades from your sweaters, before I forget what your laugh sounds like, before winter steals every drop of warmth from our little world._ _You'll step out from behind the curtain and summer will never end._

 _But October is almost here, and I can't help but think you aren't coming._

 _I want you to be happy, wherever you are, whatever you're doing._ _I want you to be happy._

 _But I don't know how to exist here, in limbo, where our realities can't converge, where I won't ever know if you're still alive._ _I can't think of you as dead, because we never buried you._

 _I still have your ring._ _It's sitting on a shelf, waiting for you._

 _Some part of me knows that I will always wait for you._

 _Barry, Barry, Barry, Barry._ _I miss saying your name out loud._ _My mouth tastes like ash whenever I think about it._ _I can look out at the city and pretend that you're out there, but then I try to say your name, and it's real:_

 _You can't hear me anymore._

 _I don't know how to grieve for you._ _Grieve is innate: flowers die, days end, strangers pass away._ _Everything happens to something somewhere else._ _But then it happens to you, and it's not grief anymore._ _It's not "I'm sorry for your loss;" "I heard;" "I'm here for you."_

 _When something happens – when this unthinkable thing we can't talk about happens – we want it to happen to the world around us._ _I want every blade of grass to know you aren't there anymore._ _I want the fields to change color, from this gorgeous ephemeral now to this halting after-you._ _I want them to be beautiful, to make me cry._ _The grass was green when you were here, and now everything is violet-blue, and I'm never going to forget how beautiful the Earth was when we looked out across these emerald fields together._

 _But the land stays the same – the Earth rises, the sun falls – and it feels emptier now._ _My life hasn't changed; I have._ _And I don't know how to stop seeing it that way._

 _I have to wake up every day and decide to live without you._ _I watch life carry on, even though it should have stumbled, it should have paused, it should have known that you went missing._

 _I can't not see you._ _Everywhere I go, I expect you to be somewhere._ _And now you're one place I can't reach._

 _I keep a vase of roses for you because there's no other place to lay them._ _They're helping, a little – because they change._ _They're fading, now._ _They'll wilt, soon._ _They'll be empty stalks eventually._ _Every shift is subtle but persistent._ _The world is changing without you._ _And I'm learning to change, too._

 _They want me to grieve – Dad, Wally, the rest of the team – but I don't know how to grieve for you._ _I don't know if I'll ever figure it out._ _I don't know how many years it will take before I stop filling a jar with flowers that fade, and wilt, and die, hoping you'll come home to see them bloom red again._

 _I know how to bury flowers, but I don't know how to weep for you._

 _My light is fading fast – the sun is setting now._ _I'll be here, in our home, and one day, maybe, in that future I thought I was ready for, you'll join me._ _We'll make a new plan._ _We'll live a new life._ _We'll be new people, changed by our experiences._

 _I ache for an after._

 _But know this, Barry West-Allen: you have always had my love._

 _And no matter where you go, that will never change._

 _Yours,_

 _Iris West-Allen._


End file.
